Managing your career trajectory

In your career, you might find yourself wondering what your next steps might be. Here are our top tips on how to manage your career, develop your skills, and understand where you might go next:

Continuous learning

Continuous learning is to constantly improve your skills and acquire new knowledge. This can be done in a number of ways, such as:

• Social learning: a mentoring scheme, coaching in the workplace or informal skill development (e.g., through observation, asking questions or asking for help).
• Formal learning: online courses, further/higher education, official training, professional workshops.
• Self-directed learning: developing skills independently, finding online information, materials and resources, and reading books/articles.

Self-assessment

The better you know and understand yourself, the easier it will be to make informed choices and decisions when managing your career. This could be through several ‘self-assessment methods’, such as:

• The Ikigai approach
• Prospects ‘Career Planner’ tool
• The Myers-Briggs test
• The National Careers Service quiz.

Take all of these with a pinch of salt – they are primarily guidance tools to help you reflect on yourself, your skills, and your abilities. If you don’t like the results, you don’t have to follow them!

Established values

Career values can, of course, differ from person to person. But essentially, they are the values that would describe the environment, tasks and industry/area that align with your outlook and beliefs and help you to foster better job satisfaction.

These values may break down into intrinsic values and extrinsic values:

• Intrinsic values could be: creativity, variety, learning new things, respect
• Extrinsic values could be salary, flexible working, pension, and location.

All of these factors can influence your decision-making across your career, as you may find your preferences differ as you gain more experience and your priorities change.

Productive network

When managing your career and work, having a trusted network can be hugely important. It can help you in the following ways:

• Strengthen skills and knowledge
• Improve relationships (which can also create a more positive working environment)
• Access new job opportunities
• Receive advice, support and guidance
• Build on your professional reputation
• Develop your self-confidence and abilities
• Exchange professional techniques and best practice
• Develop ideas and gain new perspectives.

Feedback from others

As we’ve talked about previously in understanding ‘your why’ or purpose, feedback from others is a great way of understanding your strengths.

Feedback is an effective way of knowing how and where to improve, identify new strengths and grow professionally. It can be received in more formal ways, e.g., post-interview, after a probationary period or trial, or during the evaluation of a project.

Don’t forget you can also ask your supervisors or peers for feedback. Find a suitable time, be specific, ask questions and be open. This can feel nerve-wracking at first, but it is an effective way of developing.

A Career Development or Career Action Plan can be really useful in terms of both realising your current career goals, but also in planning for the future. Thinking about the long term, where you want to be, and figuring out the smaller steps you need to get there can help you set a timeline for your personal development – and it’s a way of keeping you committed to your future!

Over to you

Fill in the Career Action Plan proforma in your workbook. Think about what three steps you can take after this course to fulfil your plan

Feel free to share anything you would like to discuss with your fellow learners in the Comments.